Improving Food Allergy Treatment Through Oral Food Challenge Reform 

My Project:

As someone who has been surrounded by food allergies and food allergy treatment for their whole life, food allergy prevention and treatment is of vital importance.  I am partnering with Latitude Food Allergy Clinic and choosing to focus my project on potential predictors of oral food challenge (OFC) outcomes. Latitude has found that a high percentage of its patients who assume they have a certain allergen take food challenges that come back positive (meaning they are not allergic to the allergen being tested). This causes a build-up in the system, which doesn't allow Latitude and other clinics nationwide to add more patients who may desperately need oral immunotherapy to make their lives safer. As such, devising a standard that is based on patient data and past medical history for what determines if a patient needs to do an OFC would help to alleviate this unnecessary backup, and provide clinicians with guidance to improve patient safety and efficiency of the oral immunotherapy process.

My Research Question:

How can patient data and clinical history be used to predict OFC outcomes, and, in turn, make allergy diagnosis via OFC more efficient?